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Google's YouTube acquires mobile video app Directr

Google's YouTube announced that it will acquire mobile video app Directr. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Directr enables businesses to create and edit promotional videos then share that content, for example, in e-newsletters or via channels like YouTube or Facebook.

"Directr is joining the YouTube ads team, where they'll help us make it easier for advertisers to create and upload awesome videos," Google said in a Google+ post.

While Directr's team will join YouTube's ad division, the company said the app will continue as a standalone product and will be offered for free.

"For now, everything you love about Directr is staying the same and we'll continue to focus on helping businesses create great video quickly and easily," said an announcement on Directr's website. "One immediate bonus: Directr will soon be all free, all the time. Thanks, YouTube!"

The app is pretty idiot proof: It offers marketers "storyboards," or templates, to help them create their videos, then takes users scene-by-scene through the process of making a video. When it's all said and done, the app even provides music, titles and other tools and lets marketers easily share the videos they've created on multiple channels.

It's a good acquisition/acquihire for YouTube. In addition to getting the talent that could help it beef up product offerings to advertisers, providing the video-creation tools for free is a great goodwill gesture to small and midsize businesses that might not have a huge video budget.

Google has been making moves to boost video revenue on YouTube. Just a couple of weeks ago, the company agreed to buy online video streaming company Twitch for a cool $1 billion; reportedly, YouTube was in charge of the acquisition.